Heartbeats
by JoyfulSerenity
Summary: Many things are out of the question when you earn as much money as Arthur Weasley. Unfortunately, the thing Molly wants most of all in this world falls under that category.


**A/N: Heya, this is a really short fic for the International Wizarding School Championship. Required information for it can be found in the endnote.**

**And, yes, you may have noticed that I changed my name from Animalium to MournfulSeverity, but that is a story for another time.**

**Obviously, I don't own Harry Potter (shocking, right?) But, I don't want to get sued so, disclaimer!**

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Golden afternoon sunlight streamed through the open window, falling in rays across Molly. Even with his face turned away, Arthur could picture the way the light reflected on her features. How every freckle across her rosy cheeks were illuminated, how the bronze stripes in her eyes glittered beside the chocolate. She was beautiful, remarkable and he'd caught sight of her like this so many times before.

With a bend of his knees, he set his briefcase down on the wood floor, the tarnished feet of it rocking slightly on the uneven planks. He stepped towards her, his footsteps quiet though he made no attempt to muffle them. She knew that he was home, that she had heard the gentle pop of his apparition in the garden, and the unforgiving squeal of rusty door hinges as he stepped inside. She had likely even seen him wander up the path to the door of their home.

However, his welcome was given without words, instead only with the scent of a fire that drew warmth into their burrow, the crackling of the logs beneath the flame. There was a shuffle followed closely by a quiet slap. The kneading of bread. Arthur watched her a moment more, watched the roll of her shoulders as she pushed the dough against the countertop before folding it and pushing it out again in a well-practiced rhythm. He wondered if she was picturing his face across it, surely that was her reasoning for not using a wand.

He moved closer in hesitation, as a man would approach a snarling beast. His fingers brushed against her exposed skin almost in fear of the retaliation. It was no more than the kiss of a butterfly's wings or a listless autumn breeze, yet she grew still beneath the touch. Her chin dipped, ringlets of red falling from her shoulders to hang like silken drapes around her face.

He could feel the tension heavy in her muscles, had seen it there, pulling her taut. Now, he was sure she was breaking.

"Mollywobbles." He sighed into her, drawing her near. He pulled her from the overworked dough that had grown sticky and stiff beneath her hands and turned her so that she faced him. Her face was blotched in red, her freckles dwarfed by the emotion that had stained her cheeks, by salty tracks that had carved their way along her flesh, but since dried.

He kissed along the red ridges of her brows, the slope of her nose. She wasn't the image he had conjured only moments before. She stood in front of him as a china doll, exquisite, but fragile. The cracks of her porcelain buffed, polished, but still hidden beneath the surface.

Her emerald green jumper was soft under the skin of his hands and he felt the reopening of the pit in his stomach. The gorge had opened the night before when he'd said those terrible things to her and he felt it attempting to swallow him whole once again. The words rattled in his brain as she began to sob in the warmth of his embrace. It's an extravagance we can't afford, not now.

Extravagance. What an awful, hurtful word to describe the thing she wanted most.

"Mollypie. I shouldn't have said...I didn't mean..." But, that was the problem. It was precisely what he meant. Children were too expensive, a baby, especially when he was paid next to nothing, regarded as useful as muck on the bottom of someone's shoe. "It isn't that I don't want one or two..." His words drifted as a new image blossomed in his mind, that of his two older brothers, the constant bickering, the jinxes. Girls. He added to himself. One or two girls. "Just, not now is all."

"So." She sniffed, turning so that she faced him, stepping far enough from him to wipe a stray tear away with the back of her hand. "What's the price you would put on a child? How many galleons do we need stashed away for you to consider it?"

He opened his mouth slightly before closing it again. The pain that outlined each of her words had ensnared him in guilt. When he spoke his voice was husky, graveled by the knowledge he would only be hurting her more. "I don't know, it isn't-"

"Well." The word was punctuated by her stepping fully out of his arms, her hands coming to her own hips. The crimson that ignited her cheeks this time was of an embarrassed fury and he could do nothing but stare at her in confusion, waiting for her to go on. With a final sniff, she did. "You have nine months to figure out what it is. "

Despair. Was that what they called this? This feeling of fuzzy uncertainty that twisted his stomach into knots? No, no. This was too light, too…happy. Too full of questions. When? More importantly, how? With a war brewing beyond these walls and their recent marriage they had been so careful. But, these were questions that could wait for later, surely Molly would begin to sob again if he didn't respond with more than the expression of a dead fish.

"A father? I'm...I'm going to be a father?" He stuttered. The words seemed difficult, as if the letters hadn't been strung together in that order before and he was left not quite sure how to say them.

Molly huffed "Artie, dear, that is generally what they call the paternal figure of a child. Merlin forbid I have to explain to you how it happened."

Arthur held up a hand, halting her sudden tirade. "I know about the doxies and the dragons."

Finding the feeling in his mouth once more, he summoned a grin. He watched as it was reflected on her own pink lips, as the tension previously held inside her evaporated. The unspoken agreement that this wasn't the fight they'd had before. That now that it was here...that a baby was quite literally between them, the row suddenly seemed so foolish.

With a step forward, his work worn hands dove into her hair, wrapping themselves in the abundance of rusty curls, begging her with their touch to come closer once more. As if by magic, the rest of the indignation melted from her features and she fell into his embrace, her own fingers pressing into the firmness of his back, his threadbare jacket. She kissed him and he could taste the familiar sweetness he often joked was sugar that had seeped from her soul. He did particularly love sweets - the evidence for it beginning to appear around his middle - but, she had always been his favorite.

"Miss Mollycoddles." He whispered when her lush lips had abandoned him, striking him out of their warmth and back into the winter world where he was left begging for more. "It was never a question of want. To be the father of your beautiful, chubby babies would be the second-best thing to happen."

"Second best?" The words seemed to tremble on the tip of her tongue in unsurety before tumbling out into the space between them. The crease between her brows, the tightness in her upper lip told him that she didn't know if she should be hurt.

"Of course, my Colly. First would be marrying you." He smiled proudly, knowing he had won, that he'd shattered the barrier she had built around her heart the night before.

His hands fell then, past her shoulders, lingering only momentarily over her chest before drifting again to just below her navel. They pushed past her jumper, lowered the hem of her skirt and rested against the warmth of her skin, beneath which a tiny heart that they had created together beat.

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**A/N:Perhaps I'm just stupider than the entire fandom, but apparently "Mollywobbles" comes from the word "collywobbles" which means (among other things) butterflies in the stomach. That's simply adorable.**

**Story Title/Link: Heartbeats**  
**School and Theme: Ilvermorny, The Burrow**  
**Special Rule: Write a setting you have never written before.**  
**Main Prompt: Word (extravagance)**  
**Additional Prompts: Color (emerald green).**  
**Year: 3**  
**Wordcount: 1295 words**


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